Background information

User(s)

Powers and abilities

Final fate

Magic is an infinitely powerful and supernatural force in the Disney universe, being responsible for most of the supernatural events in its features. Magic is neutral by nature, but those who wield it can freely use it for both good or evil; however, there are beings who are forced by an unknown agent to use it for a special standard of behavior (like fairies and pixies, who are committed to use magic to help people and preserve nature). More people are unable to use it than others.

Magic is unspecified as what it is. For instance, it may be energy, science, or simply supernatural. Regardless of this, it is still used in the majority of the Disney universe. This article will deal with magic in its extent, and not focus on Dark or Light magic specifically.

Contents

Nature

Magic seems to be a supernatural force, and as such, it is unconcerned about good or evil. Magic is utilized through spells, which can be either potions or verbal or nonverbal incantations, which renders the users' desire a reality but often breaks the laws of nature in the process. For example, during Merlin and Madam Mim's wizard duel, their different transformations altered their molecular structures, which, by current scientific knowledge, would have killed them.

Also, magic seems to splinter into different forces, the most known being love. Love, the unconditional caring over someone, is known to break even the most powerful curses and sometimes can give a supposedly non-magical person the inner strength to defeat a superpowered or all powerful sorcerer or witch. Magic also seems to work in simplistic ways: a grain of sand can reveal one's thoughts, and the movement of stars can reveal the future of nations. Magic also gives sentience to objects and natural forces such as the wind and the ocean.

Magic is not exclusively wonderful or dangerous depending on whether the user is good or evil, but whether the user possesses fear of controlling it, like Elsa when she accidentally hit Anna with her magic in the head, and later in the heart, leaving her traumatized. Some forms of magic are taught, while others do not require training.

Effects of Magic

Magic is responsible for many of the supernatural events that occur in the Disney universe. Magic is mostly used for Transfiguration (the transforming of objects and people, like transforming princes into frogs or emperors into llamas), mostly by using an incantation or a potion, but in some universes it can be simply using the will.

A second ability of magic is the power of Conjuration (creating and summoning items out of nothingness, such as Dr. Facilier's blood necklace). It is mostly used in more recent universes. Conjuration is mostly used in the universes where magic is pure energy (though magic can pass from energy to supernatural in the same universe), when a user needs an item that they cannot afford or is nonexistent (like ingredients for potions, a supercomputer, a car, etc.).

A third ability is the enhancement of the natural characteristics of a person or item. This ability is called Enchantment. Charms and enchantments are used in people, to alter a certain aspect of a person, personality, behavior or appearance. Charms whose goal is to harm or humiliate a person are called curses, but are still part of the "Enchantment" category. Some magical powers or spells can change the physical structure or appearance of an object or person or have mental effects on them. Other spells can bend space and time or warp reality. Some more stronger versions of magic can grant immortality to someone as well. Also, magic can give people superhuman senses, such as those mystically enhanced senses of dragons in the animated universe of the American Dragon.

Morality of Magic

Despite the "Black Arts and Witchcraft" books that appeared in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, magic seems to be a neutral force in terms of morality. One example is the healing powers of Rapunzel's hair. Though Rapunzel uses her hair to heal the love of her life, Mother Gothel uses it to selfishly keep her youth and essential immortality. As the magic of love is very much a form of benevolent magic, magic may be predominantly neutral with a few types of spells being exclusively "light" or "dark".

Other proofs of magical neutrality are the Olympian Gods, who usually use their divine powers to help mortals and keep the balance of the world. However, Hades uses his powers in a selfish attempt to overthrow Zeus and the rest of the Olympian Gods, and abuses his godly abilities and mistreats the souls of those who live in the Underworld.

Maleficent, the self-proclaimed "Mistress of All Evil", uses her magical powers to cause unhappiness, suffering, and pain to the kingdom, while the fairy godmothers use their powers to help others and bring happiness and joy.

Benevolent wizards often have some gray areas. Merlin puts Arthur in some dangerous situations when teaching him, and the Blue Fairy punishes Pinocchio's dishonesty by making his nose grow, though it should be noted they are both acting in the best interest of those they are cursing.

On an at least aesthetical level, magic seems to be divided into "light" and "dark", with the former being associated with good characters and having a gold, white or blue radiance while the latter is aligned with evil or, on some rare circumstances, good and neutral characters and being either black, green or purple. An exception appears to be in relation to the sun, which is light but whose destructive abilities cannot be denied; the Shamash in The Lost City of the Sun can be used by "dark" mages to summon evil light powers, while Ra has light powers but is at the very least not benevolent.

Types of Magic

There are many types of magic in the Disney universe due to the many movies, television shows, and cartoons created. However, some basic types are known and are recurrent themes throughout the Disney universe.

Witchcraft/Wizardry/Sorcery

At first shown as a darker force, witchcraft or sorcery became a softer form of magic. Initially, witches were typically evil and ugly, but in more recent movies became fair, as benevolent witches became more common. Witchcraft makes uses of spells and tools like wands or staves. Witchcraft usually can't kill directly, though the Black Cauldron's magic kills Gurgi when he dives into it to destroy it.

Some witchcraft practitioners (for example, Jafar and the Evil Queen) are evil while Mickey Mouse, Queen Elsa, and Alex Russo are known to be good sorcerers.

Within witchcraft are many magical abilities. Such abilities include Charms, such as conjuring and levitation, Transfiguration, and Animal Speech. Magical abilities come differently to every witch and wizard, although Charms is a skill expected from any witchcraft practitioner. However, witches and wizards tend to struggle at magic if they lack or have faulty wands and staves. Cedric the Sorcerer is an example of this, as he struggles with Charms before acquiring a stronger wand. Elsa's difficulties in her magic may have been due to lacking a wand as well as fearing her powers.

Shamanism

Shamanism is a kind of magic that relies on natural forces like plants and animals: shamans have a deep connection with the spirits of the wilderness and can call for help or guidance from them. Shamanistic Magic can be used in more than one way, but always with some connection to natural elements. It also seems to derive its power directly from the spirits that regulate such elements, and this makes it a risky kind of magic, since the exact purpose of these regulators is not always clear and challenging them brings to dangerous consequences: an example of these punishments are Kenai and Mor'du, both transformed (coincidentally) into bears because of their selfishness and lack of respect. However, these castigations are always linked to the guilt of the individual and offer the chance to be broken if the person shows remorse and makes amend, making Shamanism one of the most neutral forms of magic. Shamans can also decide to take action through indirect ways in order to deliver these lessons of life, like the Witch did towards Merida by affecting her mother (who herself was in need to learn a lesson). Tanana is a trademark example of shaman, since she's the spiritual guide of her tribe and custodian of the secrets of the nature and the spirits. Gramma Tala fills the same spot for her tribe and, despite never being shown performing acts of magic, her connection to the sea allowed her to become a spiritual manta ray in order to aid her granddaughter. Rafiki too can be seen as a practitioner of Shamanistic Magic since he's able to interrogate leaves to learn what happens in the Pride Lands and so discover that Simba is alive.

Voodoo

Voodoo, often referred to as dark magic or the dark arts, was magic practiced in either the Caribbean or Louisiana. Voodoo was also a religion, beginning as a tribal and spiritual belief in Africa. Born in the jungles of the Caribbean, Voodoo had spread all across the untamed regions of the world. The main difference from shamanism is that voodoo derives its power less from the natural and material world and more from underworld spirits. Such spirits are the main limit of voodoo, as, like Facilier shows, higher levels of power require higher prices to be paid, and failing to meet this payment leads usually to the downfall of the practitioner.

Mama Odie was a blind, 197-year-old voodoo priestess, while Dr. Facilier (alias "The Shadow Man") was a silver-tongued but evil witch doctor. Tia Dalma was a well-known voodoo mystic in the Caribbean. The infamous Blackbeard took a passion for forbidden dark magic, and dabbled in the dark arts within his private chamber in the captain's cabin aboard the Queen Anne's Revenge, which appeared more like the den of an evil magician.

Dragon Magic

A recurrent theme of Disney movies is the presence of Dragons as an obstacle for heroes and other good aligned characters. Most dragon characters are actually sorcerers and witches who used spells to transform themselves, such as Maleficent, while others are pure-blood dragons who have supernatural powers, such as Elliott. However, Dragon Magic is indeed a branch as it has many common traits.

Dragon Magic enables one to breathe fire, fly (even if the particular dragon doesn't have wings) as well as grant superhuman strength and agility. Natural dragons are very durable, and come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Dragon fire bears magical powers including the abilities to melt nearly indestructible items and enchanted ice. True Dragon Magic users are natural dragons such as Jake Long and Mushu, who are characters who possess great, inherent Dragon Magic. Dragons, like other magical creatures, are best handled by sorcerers, no matter how educated in magic the sorcerers are, and how "tame" the dragons may be.

Fairy Magic

Fairy Magic is capable of doing the same things that witchcraft can, but it comes from nature rather than arcane forces. It can transform, bend time and space, and create things out of nothing as well as give life to non-living entities. Fairies use this in their goal of keeping the balance of everything. Many witches and wizards gained their powers from the fairies, whether through objects, such as pixie dust, or through blood, if the magicians are of fairy descent. These fairies can actually be spiritual or even divine at times, such as in the case of the Blue Fairy. Fairies include the typical small, winged human, but can be expanded to include other magical folk such as giants and elves.

Fairies also use their magic to help people. For example, the Fairy Godmother appeared before Cinderella to send her to the ball, claiming that the girl's faith summoned her, and used her incredibly powerful magic wand to transform various animals into coachmen and horses, a pumpkin into a carriage and the girl's rags into a beautiful dress. However, this magic ended at Midnight, indicating that the Fairy Godmother's magic is either not permanent or she can put a time limit on her spells, as the glass slippers remained permanent. But, the Fairy Godmother's wand isn't always a tool of strictly good magic and, in the hands of someone wicked, can be used for the most villainous acts. Furthermore, Fairies use their magic to give blessings to newborns and the Three Good Fairies in particular possessed the purest of magic, Flora herself stating that they can only bring joy and happiness to people. But that didn't stop Merryweather turning the evil Maleficent's pet raven Diablo into a stone statue and Flora casting an incantation that made Prince Phillip able to hurl the Sword of Truth into Maleficent's heart, killing her.

Genie Magic

Genie Magic is known to be one of the most powerful forms of magic, as genies are known to possess "phenomenal, cosmic power". However, such power comes at a heavy price: freedom. By some divine law, genies are bound to certain objects, such as lamps or bottles, which they remain trapped within until a mortal finds and rubs it. Then the genie must grant their master any three wishes they desire (with the exception of death, love, resurrection or additional wishes), regardless of how they feel about it. Because of the disastrous results if the Genies' vessels would fall into the wrong hands (Jafar is a great example), they are usually hid away in secret places such as the Cave of Wonders, which are only open to those who are worthy of being the Genies' master, such as the noble streetrat, Aladdin.

The only way to be free of eternal servitude is if a master would wish the Genie free, but this would cause the Genie in question to either become weakened, such as Genie's magic becoming "semi-phenomenal, nearly-cosmic power", or become mortal, like with Gene. Also, if the object were to be destroyed, then the Genie would be destroyed along with it, as was the case with Jafar.

However, the Genie does not actually need a wish in order to accomplish a task, such as when Aladdin tricked the Genie into getting him out of the Cave of Wonders by pretending to not believe in his powers. Also, the Genie can grant their master's wishes however they like instead of how the master imagined. For example, when Abis Mal wished for the sunken treasure ship of Coeur du Mer, Jafar intentionally transported him to where the ship was underwater, forcing Abis Mal to use the second wish to return to the desert, thus wasting two wishes.

Additionally, Genie magic can be modified by other forms of magic in order to gain additional abilities. For example, by placing his talisman on Gene's lamp, Merlock was able to make infinite wishes.

God Magic

Gods are some of the most powerful beings in Disney Universe and are capable of almost unrivaled feats of magic. Gods of all kinds share supernatural traits like being immortal, nearly all-powerful, with superhuman physical prowess, capable of teleporting and dimensional travel, they can conjure, transform and enchance objects and even other living beings. A limit of god magic is that it's usually limited to an "area of competence", a particular, more or less wide, pertinence of which they are the supposed complete rulers, even other gods usually are powerless in matters that are tasked to other gods: like Haephestus is the god of the forge and the only one who can make bolts for Zeus, Xandra is the goddess of adventure and possesses all traits of a brave adventurer, Thor is the god of thunder and can produce much more powerful lightning than other Asgardians and so on. God Magic is also capable of affecting the environment, always limited by their area of influence: Te Fiti, as a goddess of nature and life, is one of the most powerful godly beings of Disney, and she and her actions influence the whole world (which she herself created). God Magic is nearly, but not completely, invincible and even mortal beings can defeat it and subjugate gods: Calypso, goddess of the sea, was trapped for centuries in a human form by the Brethren Court. God Magic can also be drained and eliminated, the most notable example being Hercules, who was first deprived of his God nature by a potion from the Underworld and then Hades himself took away what little was left; in the same way, God Magic can be infused into other beings making them demigods (for example, Maui was born a human before the gods made him a demigod and created his magic hook) or even full gods (Hercules again).

Disney Magic

Disney Magic is capable of doing many great things. It even has allowed all the theme park characters to know each other even though they all come from different fictional worlds. According to Fozzie Bear, it has three main parts: wishes, dreams, and pixie dust. If misused, it can cause users to shapeshift. As seen in the House of Mouse episode "Where's Minnie?", Disney Magic can take on the form of fireworks. As seen in the Disney's Animal Kingdom promo, it can also create entire worlds of imagination.

Appearing Magic

Appearing Magic is capable of making anything and anyone appear from nothingness. Appearing Magic can make appear anything and anyone where magic users can look at any spot to by saying magic words, or just say what they want to appear, even when they don't have to say what they what to appear they can just talk about what they want to appear, as seen in Alice in Wonderland. Appearing Magic can make anything or anyone appear by itself.

Summoning Magic

Summoning Magic is capable of calling on a magical, or often mythological entity without the hassle of having it follow it around the user. Sora uses this type of magic, while the ones he summons include Genie and Simba. He was helped in this by the Fairy Godmother.

Elemental Magic

Elemental, or Natural, Magic is both one of the purest and most common forms of Magic, because it commands directly the pure forms of the elements, like Air, Water, Fire and Earth. Elemental Magic is used by almost every kind of witch and wizard, with various degrees of power deriving from the skill of the practitioner and their connection to this element: a powerful sorcerer like Yen Sid is able to placate an enormous amount of water in a matter of seconds, and the Spring Sprite, being a creature of life and creation, is shown to restore a destroyed forest in very little time. The main example of Elemental Magic and its internal difference are the W.I.T.C.H. girls, with each of them possessing control over an element (Water, Fire, Earth, Air and Quintessence, said to be the element above all the others) and they are being mentioned to be born with such link, hence their power over them. Kingdom Hearts lists also Light and Darkness as two "superelements" whose continuous clashes dictate the worlds and their people's destinies. Like every other type, Elemental Magic is strongly influenced by the emotional state of the user, as seen when Elsa covered her entire kingdom in an endless winter out of sheer fear and stress despite having little to no knowledge of her own powers.

Alchemy

Alchemy is a special kind of chemistry experimenting on magic. Many could call it the "science of magic". Examples include Yzma's work on potions, Ansem the Wise on the matter of the heart and the trope namer, the Alchemist (later known as the Skeleton King) for he used both magic and science in experiments, which might be the same for Stanford Pines. One good example of Alchemy is Zarina on Pixie Dust. Alchemy is a difficult magical art, requiring lots of practice and skill. A similar magical art, Potions, is also difficult, and is best performed by sorcerers with great power or a knack for it.

Necromancy

Necromancy is a dark branch of magic that focuses on resurrecting and controlling corpses. Due to meddling with the very rules of life and death, it is a kind of magic that very few explore, and many necromancers have no good intentions. Resurrection by necromancy is different from real resurrection because the reanimated corpse loses its personality and free will and is bound to the necromancer, following every order they receive from their master. Voodoo practitioners are usually seen as talented necromancers because of their connection with underworld spirits, but it's not always the case: both Facilier and Blackbeard are voodoo practitioners, but the first one never used necromancy, differently from the pirate. The "quality" of the resurrected individual depends of the time passed between the death and the reanimation: Blackbeard's officers can pass as still living men and are capable of speaking and limited thinking, while the Cauldron Born, maybe the most notorious example of necromancy in Disney productions, are entirely mute skeletons; the Horned King who resurrected them is so talented that can control an entire army of them. Necromancy is such a dangerous power that even Genie Magic, one of the most limitless kinds of magic in existence, is forbidden to perform such an act.

Quantum Magic

The first of three kinds of magic present in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this kind of magic taps into the power of quantum physics to create its reality-warping effects, and it's closer to cosmic power than supernatural magic. Alien interface commands act as "spells" for this brand of magic, and alien artifacts are used to channel it instead of talismans. This is the kind of magic that Asgardians like Loki and Hela use, with Thor famously claiming that "your (Jane Foster's) ancestors called it magic, but you call it science". Kevin Feige later revealed that Scarlet Witch's powers are Quantum Magic.

Eldritch Magic

This is the second kind of magic present in the Marvel Cinematic universe. As used by the Masters of the Mystic Arts and the Zealots, it allows the user to draw dimensional energy and manifest it as fiery orange energy to conjure spells, create weapons, and shields. The users of this Magic have mostly came to Kamar Taj to be healed from the loss of loved ones (ie. Kaecilius), or others from to be healed from paralysis (ie: Jonathan Pangborn), and some come to find peace from terrible accidents or life events (ex: Doctor Strange, Baron Mordo). With the help of Sling Rings, the users of this Magic can teleport and travel to different dimensions. This magic is purely mystical in origin and nature, as opposed to Quantum Magic. Chi is a specialized varation on Eldritch Magic.

Dark Dimension Magic

The third kind of magic present in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this form of magic is used by Dormammu, the king of the Dark Dimension, also it is used by the Ancient One (who forbade the Masters of the the Mystic Arts from doing so due to the possible consequences of the users being under the influence of Dormammu). This form of Magic was also granted by Dormammu to Kaecilius, Lucian, and Kaecilius’ other Zealots. The practitioners of this Dark Magic can achieve Immortality, and the powers of warping matter and space in the Mirror Dimesion, and in the real world. The pracitioners of this form of Magic can also bend and or break the laws of physics, gravity, and nature, and conjure Space Shards as weapons. Since the Dark Dimension is a place beyond time and death, practitioners of this Dark Magic can possess resistance to Time and Temporal Spells. However, the cost of the use of this Dark Magic outweighs the benefits greatly. Those that use this Magic and fall under Dormammu‘s lies and influence, like Kaecilius and his Zealots, will slowly begin their transformations into Mindless Ones, which are enslaved servants of Dormammu that are forced to inhabit his realm and endure torment and torture for all eternity. This magic combines the cosmic and the mystical, and thus can be considered a fusion of Quantum Magic with Eldritch Magic.

Sun Magic

A rare type of magic displayed because it forces the narrative to acknowledge the destructive power of the light. The Shamash in "The Lost City of the Sun" grants its user destructive searing light while Ra uses sunlight to attack the heroes.

Known Magic Users

The Disney Universe beholds a number of magic users, mages, sorcerers, witches, and wizards coming in all shapes and sizes. There are some who use magic for good and benevolent purposes, while others utilize it for wicked, selfish, and fiendish goals. Others are indifferent to good and evil and thus use magic for their own reasons, regardless of good or evil.

Magical Items

Magic by itself can be a powerful force, especially when it is channeled through a conduit to concentrate its power and focus. Thus, there are a number of magical items in the Disney Universe, the majority of them having a specific magical function and purpose while others are used to practice magic of varying forms.